


Wise and Cynical As Hell

by action-cat (clytemnestras)



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4328916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/action-cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Pete turns twenty seven his friends throw a party.</p><p>When Gabe turns twenty seven he loses three days to Vegas champagne and throws his phone into lake Meade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wise and Cynical As Hell

The car ride is long, the plane longer. He didn’t even bother with a suitcase, just emptied his wallet into a carry-on and packed in a hoodie and a pair of swimming trunks - nothing he’d miss, and nothing anyone would miss for him.

It’s a calm flight. Not enough to sleep, maybe, but enough to forget himself; drifting like the clouds smothering the window.

Seventeen and a half minutes ago in LA, Gabe turned twenty seven. On a flight about to land in McCarran International, Gabe is planning on drinking until his brain combusts, sleeping for a day or two, then drinking some more.

He’s made himself a promise, is the thing. Seven texts before he reaches the strip and he’ll wander back with a tucked tail and the sparkle less distant in corner of his eye. He checked before take off with the tally at three - Vicky and Nate making kissy faces at him, _call me when you are older :)_ from Diego and three words from Pete he doesn’t want to think about.

_We made it._

*

_Pete’s party is tamer than what Gabe is used to - what he expected. The alcohol is less a flow than a trickle but everyone is happy. It’s like an Alice trip, he’s swimming in Cheshire Cat faces, laughing into the night - hands smacking his shoulder, flexing around his biceps._

__

_Pete is somewhere, sober and smiling and it might be real and it might not. It’s hard to tell if either of them have the right to be happy._

__

_This isn’t a celebration, not really. It’s like a wake for a life not quite snuffed out within that particular window. It’s a victory, but Gabe isn’t sure he’s worked out what for yet._

__

_It would be rude to ask the dj - wherever the fucker is - to play_ Come As You Are, _but he’s not sure if he requested_ Me and Bobby McGee _anyone but Patrick would get the joke._

*

He rents a car from the airport. The hotel isn’t booked yet - he’d stay on an inflatable mattress on a burlesque club floor, doesn’t matter to him. He rents a car and sits in the car park for over twenty minutes just counting his heartbeats. His hands shake, a little when he checks his phone again. Two more texts - Mikey and Travie mumbling congratulatory nonsense he can hear in the back of his head, breathed out in their soft voices like cheek kisses. There’s a missed call from Ricky, and that - he can’t -

He drops the phone onto his lap and grips the wheel until his knuckles flush white. Fuck the strip.

Gabe turns onto the road without any real direction.

He drives and drives and drives.

*

_He’s not hiding from anyone - not well anyway, because Victoria is standing opposite him in the guest room, arms crossed over her chest and eyes darkly sober._

__

_She doesn’t have to say anything. The thumping music from through the walls and Gabe’s stillness says enough._

__

_She leaves him with her gaze still stuck to his skin, but he refuses to watch her go._

*

The lake is clear and dark and silver, stretched out in front of him and slithering between his toes. He's ankle deep, shouldn't be, but he is, feeling the cold of the water soak up his jeans like hands gripping on and holding him to something. He might just ...disappear if they don't.

The water ebbs and bays around him, drifting like something alive. It keeps swishing, pushing up against him then drawing back, never quite silent.

He has his phone in his hand, heavier than it's supposed to feel. Gabe thinks for a moment, about snapping a picture of the ugly yellow of the moon reflected back in the dark water -  sick looking and warped - when it buzzes in his hand. He hauls it as far into the lake as he can throw it without checking who it was.

He sits in the car with his feet wet and his mind dense, still looking at the water and how it could swallow him whole. He isn't _Kurt Co-fucking-bain._

 

 

 _Jimi "Fuck-Me" Hendrix_.

 

 

_Who-the-fuck-is Pete Wentz._

 

No one and their mother knows who he is, a bunch of teenie-bopper TMZ readers aside - he's nothing. He won't get a vigil for the memory of a blessed life snuffed out too young. He is Gabriel Saporta, a nobody who tried.

He starts the drive back towards Vegas, daring the sun to catch him awake.

*

_Ashlee kisses him on the cheek when he wanders outside, gasping for clean air, a cigarette if someone'll bum him one. She's got half a glass of wine in her left hand and flat shoes on her feet. In that moment she looks like the smallest thing Gabe's ever seen._

__

_He bends down to let her kiss him and never really straightens up, leaning on the open brickwork and huffing back deep pulls of night air._

__

_"It's not your night, y'know." Her voice has this infection to it, something like a smile, yet utterly foreign. She pours her wine down the open drain beside the door. "Not mine either - just don't tell him that."_

__

_She leaves him out there, slouched against the wall. He slides down until he's just sitting on the back porch, asking the stars questions they can't hear, anyway._

*

He wakes up face down on a rough carpet, clothes half on and mind half seizing. His whole body burns deep down in the bone and his breath feels like it doubles back to bite him when he pants against the floor.

Time feels thick and unfathomable. He feels like he's lived whole lives between stumbling  onto the plane and waking up on this carpet. He feels older.

It takes a few minutes for his body to regain motion. He twists listlessly on the ground until he can push himself up off his belly and over onto his back with a harsh groan.

When he gets there, Pete is staring down at him from the still-made bed, an empty grin on his face.

*

_No one stumbles after him, so that's a benefit. Life of the party, Saporta, way to ruin a reputation in three hours or less. He might fall asleep there, on the patio. It's hard to say. The moon might have moved across the sky when he blinked, but that could just be the shock of midnight sobriety._

__

_There's still a low bassline sinking through the walls, and it feels like home, almost. Alone with the music. Like being eighteen in Rutgers and fingering the fret of his unplugged bass, just to feel the almost of a vibration._

__

_"Wakey wakey unckie-Gabey."_

__

_Pete flops down, slightly off kilter - could be liquor, could be adrenaline, could be Pete's own brand of fuck-knows-what._

__

_"That's maybe the creepiest thing you've ever called me sober." Gabe doesn't look at him. He wanted a cigarette before but now he aches for one, a mild weight in his hand, something solid to focus on._

__

_"Maybe, but I'm sure I'll think of something worse before tonight ends." Pete rests his head on Gabe's shoulder- breathes heavily on his neck._

__

_The night is just that edge of too-bright, even beyond the gold spilling from Pete's windows. Maybe LA never really sees the dark._

__

_"Enjoying your party?" Loaded question, loaded gun. Funny how it's Gabe handing it over._

__

_Pete laughs._

__

_Doesn't say yes, though._

*

"Pete?" His voice is rough, croaking - like something foreign stuck in his throat trying to crawl out. The carpet feels like it might tear open into jaws and swallow him. He can hope, anyway.

Pete smacks him. Hard. "The fuck is wrong with you? A week, Gabe. You went AWOL for a week and none of us - fuck. What if I it was me who disappeared and all they found was a cell in the middle of Lake fucking Meade?”

"Yelling, less of it please." He drags his hand over his eyes. His whole body is shaking, slightly. Little tremors, Richter scale almost-time-for-apocalypse. He thinks if he keeps his eyes closed long enough the world might end around him.

" _Gabe_."

He winces, but doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just  lies there shaking, half naked on the shitty hotel carpet.

He hears Pete shifting on the bed, then - weight on his chest, holding him down, together. “Gabe, what did you take?”

“I don’t - nothing, I think, I don’t -”

Pete’s hand fans out on his chest, trails down his ribs. “It’s okay man, I’m here.”

Gabe shakes his head. He can feel his chest rise and fall under Pete’s hand, the off-rhythm of his heart; harder, deeper than it should be. “Do they, does anyone.."

“No one knows you’re here - or about the phone. You freaked the shit out of me, though. I thought - I was too scared to tell anyone, in case it was true, y’know?”

A wounded sound scrapes along Gabe’s throat, but Pete keeps stroking his chest, and it’s suddenly easy for Gabe to fall back to sleep, sinking out of the dizzy pain of wakefulness, Pete pressed up against his side.

*

_“Pretty sure this is meant to feel like a victory, but mostly I just wanna trash something. That’s so like me, huh?” Pete laughs, except he doesn’t, really._

__

_Gabe means to say something, he does, but the moment slides past without him realising, and it’s just him, and Pete and the noise pollution._

*

Gabe comes round to room service plates on the bed and Pete talking to someone from the bathroom too low for Gabe to make out the words.

He drags himself onto his feet and fumbles with a water bottle and drinking half down in one go. It drags roughly down his throat like nails before it starts to soothe. Pete goes quiet in the bathroom and Gabe sits down on the edge of the bed, poking through the food that’s still warm enough to be decent.

“Eat. Then you’ll have the strength to deal with my lecturing, Andy’s been giving me tips.” Pete is - not smiling when he walks over, but also not looking at Gabe like he’s about to drop dead; and that’s something Gabe can appreciate, because it still feels like he might.

Gabe picks up a french fry and almost chokes on the first bite, but it gets easier. He might hurl it all back up at any moment, but managing to swallow without retching feels almost like a win.

It’s not long before Pete is stealing them from between his fingers and licking up the salt. He grabs some back, pinching them just before Pete bites down. There’s grease all over the bedclothes, staining roses an ugly grey color that slides against his skin when Pete shoves him away and he crawls back over, laughing as he bites down on the skin of Pete’s shoulder where it peeks out of his shirt.

Pete rolls back, knocking the plates off the bed and sliding up against the headboard where Gabe can pin him down, blocked in at all sides. It’s easy to lean down and fit his mouth against Pete’s, licking along his bottom lip and taking a few crumbs with him.

Pete softens underneath him, blinks sleepily when he pulls back for breath. “You taste like shit, dude.”

Gabe rolls onto his back.“Yeah, figures.”

It’s roughly thirty seconds before he throws up all over the carpet.

*

_“I think I’m needed back inside.” Pete kisses him on the cheek. “Cheer up, Gabanti, or I’ll send Travie out here to kick your ass.”_

__

_Gabe thinks about pulling him back down, maybe kissing him, maybe saying he’s sorry. Gabe thinks a lot of things._

__

_He doesn’t do any of them._

*

He sits in the shower as Pete washes him down which feels fucking ridiculous and childish but his body parts are still mildly rebellious. His hands shake when Pete helps him back up, but he manages to brush his teeth on his own as Pete towells him off.

There’s a little blood in the sink, but neither of them say anything about it.

Gabe feels more human in the cheap cotton bathrobe, wet hair sending long lines of water rolling down his spine.

When he feels like he can walk out of the bathroom unaided, Pete thrusts another bottle of water at him. He drinks it slow and hopes he doesn’t throw up again. It’s hurting his ribs, now. He climbs onto the bed and slides under the covers and Pete slides in beside him.

He’s slept for at least eighteen hours, and still he’s fucking exhausted. Pete curls up behind his back and doesn’t say shit about being big spoon.

*

_He’s just. Tired, maybe._

__

_That might actually be the sun coming up over the hills, and Gabe’s been sat on the porch for - two, maybe three hours now._

__

_The music gets quieter so gradually Gabe doesn’t realise it’s stopped._

*

It isn't what Gabe means to happen. The TV drones unhelpfully where too much sleep weighs heavy on his skull and he fumbles for the remote, hand landing on Pete's thigh. It's so easy from there to let it creep up, to touch the soft skin of his belly where his shirt is askew.

Pete looks at him for a long moment. Asks, "Is this, do you...?" And Gabe nods, leaning forward enough to let their mouths meet.

Pete lets Gabe curl up and kiss him until it feels like he can’t breathe, until he’s sweaty and half hard and the sheets are too constricting. Pete’s fingers tangle in Gabe’s hair when he pulls back, drags him back down.

They make out sloppily like fumbling kids, Gabe biting down too hard and Pete pulling too tight and it’s ridiculous given the circumstance but knowing that can’t stop him pulling Pete’s lower lip into his mouth and digging his teeth in.

Pete rolls on top of him without breaking apart and Gabe’s hands frame his hips easily, grinding up against him. They keep moving like that, kissing desperately, Gabe gripping Pete’s hips as he grinds down and it feels like overwhelming - like being sucked out of his skin. He feels like the pull of Pete’s lips on his, the scrape of fabric on his skin between them, the bone under his fingers and the hair tickling his neck. He feels like a list of sensations stuck inside a body, detached but desperate.

Gabe’s so hard and it aches somewhere distant but his thrusts are meeting Pete’s without his consent. His hands are sweaty enough to slip on Pete’s hips and he grabs on harder, must be bruising from how Pete whimpers and kisses him harder, grinding his hips in a tight circle. Gabe pinches his hips again and that's it - Pete goes rigid and whines into Gabe's mouth, rutting against him as he comes.

Gabe doesn't realise he's flipped them over until Pete is slow-eyed under him, smiling faintly as he licks his lips. Gabe can't, Pete is just pliant under him and his arms wind around Gabe's neck as as he thrusts down hard and fast. He comes like that, fingers biting into Pete’s hips as he spills into his boxers, panting into Pete’s mouth.

He’s careful not to rest his weight on Pete, held up on where his hands are fanned either side of his face and his strength must be coming back because he can stay like that long enough to catch his breath.

Pete asks him if he feels any better, after.

Gabe can’t say yes or no exactly, daylight filtering watery through the curtains, grazing his feet where the poke off the end of the bed and not reaching far enough to hit Pete’s - so he turns and kisses Pete softly and laces their fingers like that might be answer enough.

*

_The house is almost empty when he steps back inside. Beanbag chairs and discarded drinks are placed like ghosts of memory all across the living room and down into the hall._

__

_It’s morning, by any definition, but Gabe couldn’t drive with a clear conscience. His head is swampy and everything seems dulled, like static across every one of his senses. He drags his feet across the carpet and can’t remember where he left his shoes - if he came with shoes. He climbs Pete’s stairs and wanders between the guestrooms. Joe and Patrick are settled in one - Patrick in pyjamas and Joe fully clothed like sleeping over was just a half formed idea. Travie is sprawled on the bed in the other room, not sleeping but blinking up at Gabe like he can read his thoughts._

__

_“Do I get a bedtime story or do I have to weed it out of you?” He smiles and crosses his legs, makes room on the patchwork duvet._

__

_“Did Ash -”_

__

_“She went home for the night. Wanted to let it all sink in, I guess. I understand the sentiment.”_

__

_Gabe crawls onto the bed and Travis curls and arm around him._

__

_“We did it, Gabanti”, Travie says into his hair._

__

_“_ He _did it.”_

__

_“Yeah, he did.”_

*

“If it was you, there’d be a whole brigade.”

Pete makes an ugly sound and turns over, smashing his face into Gabe’s chest. “The fuck’re you sayin’?” His voice drags on sleepiness and Gabe can’t make out how long they’ve been holed up in the hotel room, or any time he’s seen Pete rest.

It should make him feel guilty, but he can’t make sense of that right now.

“If it was you - you said what if it was you. And if it was, there’d be more than one person wiping up your puke.” Gabe leans back and scoots down the bed so they’re face to face, wondering how sallow he must look next to Pete, how sick.

“Gabe what the fuck?” Pete’s voice is hard and the glassiness has been blinked away. He looks some approximation of hurt and terrifying.

Gabe wants to do something, to take it back, but his chest is so tight that he can barely control his breaths, let alone what’s coming out of his mouth.

“You have everyone, a hundred people who would kill to keep you breathing and I’m just. Here, maybe.” His cheeks are wet and it doesn’t make sense because he’s talking, not crying, not choking on tears - but his cheeks are wet and his eyes are stinging so that must mean something.

Pete twists sharply, fumbling around on the nightstand to grab his phone. “I’m on strict instructions to describe every breath you take to Vicky until she can slap you herself. Travie told me when Elisa first left and you hadn’t found a replacement you brought him down to Nevada to get trashed - that was my first clue.

“Patrick, though? He told me I wouldn’t keep myself safe if I lost you and therefore I had to fucking find you - and also that you’re his best talent and I’d be losing thousands. So don’t give me that bullshit woe is me crap - I signed sealed and delivered that with a clandestine stamp on the box. You have the biggest and best fucking support system anyone could ask for and you’re snotting into my shoulder about how no one loves you like they love me. Get over it, asshole. Grow up.”

Gabe takes a long breath, holds it in his lungs until the sobbing can’t pull it out of him and breathes out with a whine. “I did, that was the problem.” His voice is very small.

Pete smiles at him. Gabe can’t work out what that means.

“You don’t get to be one of my lost boys anymore, man.”

Gabe laughs - it’s a system shock, but he laughs hard, legs curling up into his stomach. “Was I ever?”

Pete leans close and licks the shell of his ear. “You were my most favourite of all.”

*

_Gabe doesn’t sleep._

__

_Not even when Travis does, snoring quietly into his shoulder. Gabe lies there until his breaths get even then crawls out._

__

_He wanders back through the corridor, glances in on Pete curled up around a pillow and looking tiny on the big bed. Gabe pulls the door shut._

*

Pete doesn’t notice when Gabe slips out. He takes Pete’s phone with him, hopes he can still remember his father’s number off the top of his head.

*

_It’s around nine, he thinks._

__

_No one else is up yet, and he knows it could be a while before anyone stumbles downstairs, but he starts rifling through the kitchen anyway._

__

_Breakfast will keep his mind occupied enough as long as he remembers it isn’t his house to burn down. Not a lot of Pete’s food is what he’d call edible but he has time to make it into something. He chops up some apples to get started on a fruit salad, just in case._

*

Pete is painting his toenails when Gabe lets himself back inside. It took him three tries to find the right room, but no one needs to know that.

Pete smiles at him without missing a single violet stroke. Gabe can’t pretend to be surprised.

“I’m glad to see my phone isn’t learning to swim like yours.”

Gabe grins and flops down face-first on the bed. “I’m not predictable enough to do the same trick twice. Also I hope you know you’re doing mine next.” He wiggles his toes and digs them into Pete’s thigh.

“Needy bitch.”

“You bet your ass.”

*

_Gabe slides a plate toward Patrick who turns an odd green colour and grimaces. He scoots the plate back._

__

_“Cereal. In an hour. Maybe.”_

__

_Gabe smiles at him and makes a show of eating a strawberry as decadently as he can and Patrick’s skin, if possible, turns greener._

__

_Joe smacks him on the back and picks at his boxers. “Who wants to wake sleepless beauty up there?”_

__

_Patrick kicks Joe hard in the shin._

__

_Gabe isn’t sure if that’s retaliation for waking him up or for saying they should disturb Pete but he ducks out anyway, creeping toward the stairs._

__

_Pete’s standing on the landing, looking ruffled and confused. He smiles at Gabe and Gabe - he smiles back._

*

Gabe wakes up with his head on Pete’s belly, Pete drawing idly in sharpie on his arm.

“When are we leaving? We can’t just hide away in Vegas forever. Vicky would kill me and Bill would pout until I admitted I’d rather have run away with him.”

Pete makes a considering sound in the back of his throat and keeps drawing. Gabe can’t make out what it is, but he thinks he can wait until Pete is finished.

*

_He’s the last to leave. Unsurprising, really._

__

_Pete is sat on Gabe’s outstretched legs and feeding him cheetos when Cartoon Network switches over to adult.swim before they have any real idea of the time. Gabe licks Pete’s fingers clean, sucks his fingers into his mouth until every spec of orange dust is gone._

__

_Pete pulls his fingers back with a slick sound and leans down, pressing his lips to Gabe’s. His mouth stays closed._

__

_Gabe sighs and leans back. He feels too warm and ill-fitting inside himself._

__

_He refrains from humming_ Growing Up _under his breath - mostly because they were never his lines to sing. Pete lies down with his head on Gabe’s chest when the Robot Chicken rerun starts, and Gabe curls his arm around Pete’s waist._

__

_Gabe’s pretty sure the starlet being mocked on-screen is meant to be one of the Simpsons, but Pete still laughs, so he doesn’t say anything._

__

_Pete mutters something into his shirt and Gabe asks “What?”_

__

_“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”_

__

_Gabe doesn’t say anything - doesn’t understand the moment, or the reference - it hits somewhere in the back of his mind, but._

__

_Pete laughs, almost. It’s a sound Gabe can’t place in happiness and can’t fit anywhere else, either. “I lift my eyes and all is born again.”_

__

_Still, Gabe says nothing, fingers brushing softly over the top of Pete’s t-shirt._

__

_“You’re so fucking uncultured, dude.”_

__

_Gabe snorts, affronted, “Yeah, which one of us actually finished college, dispshit? Ask me one on philosophy.”_

__

_“If a tree falls in the forest, does it make - ow, fucker, stop hitting me -”_

*

They face each other, as they fuck - Pete on his back, legs wrapped tight around Gabe’s waist. Pete keeps his eyes trained on Gabe’s with every thrust, hardly blinks as though he’s trying to get inside him, crawl inside his brain and take up residence.

Gabe almost lets his drop closed, but refuses to let Pete win.

He stays deep, grinding his hips in hard and making Pete groan, back arched. His head is thrown back into the pillow and it’s so easy for Gabe to lean down and suck on the base of his throat; to mark him up like he belongs there. Pete whines, he claws his fingers through Gabe’s hair to keep him there, and Gabe sucks harder on this skin, trails down to leave little bites with his teeth then soothe them with his tongue. When he’s done Pete’s throat will be painted in pinks and purples, little starburst supernovas across his skin and Gabe won’t look away when he stares at them in the mirror like he might connect the dots.

When he gets to Pete’s collarbone, Gabe bites down hard and sucks even harder, one hand pumping Pete’s dick where it’s trapped between their bodies. Pete keens and bucks up, squeezing hard on Gabe. His rhythm stutters and he’s not ready to let go but it’s going to happen now, he can’t stop. He tightens his hand around Pete, fisting him harder and faster as he drags his teeth in jagged lines where Pete’s bones press into skin.

He can’t tell who lets go first, only that his hand is wet when his vision comes back and Pete is whimpering where Gabe’s hand is still squeezing down on his cock and his hips are moving restlessly before he can make himself settle.

He pulls out and ties off the condom, throwing it over the side of the bed and wipes his hand where the sheets hang over the sides. Pete lies on his side, looking at him consideringly.

“Feeling quite like a real boy yet?”

Gabe doesn’t answer. He hauls Pete on top of him and wraps his arms round tight.

*

_The thing is, Pete falls asleep on the sofa and Gabe doesn’t have the heart to wake him._

__

_He feels vaguely like his insides have been scooped out and there’s nothing he can shove inside to replace them._

__

_He covers Pete over with a blanket, finds his shoes, and walks home alone._

__

_The night seems darker this time, and it’s almost a comfort._

*

Gabe wakes up to a clean hotel room and two suitcases sat beside the door.

There’s a box on the bedside table for a cheap-looking Motorola.

“Neverland is a myth!” Pete calls from the bathroom. “The real world awaits.”

 **  
** “Who ever said twenty seven was old?” Gabe asks back.


End file.
